no one hears you say my name
by irresistible.revolution
Summary: Bonnie needs a source of magical energy to defeat Silas, and Klaus is the most powerful there is. But when nothing goes as planned, one night's ritual changes everything -and everyone- it touches. (Klonnie. Post-S3 AU)
1. Chapter 1

**part 1/7: litany**

* * *

 _in the dark/ in the dark / baby, you and me/_

 _in the dark /_

\- Brenda Marie Osbey, _speaking of trains_

* * *

The taste of her own blood confirms the spell's failure. Bonnie surveys the makeshift altar before her in weary frustration, wiping her nose and shutting her Grimoire before making her way slowly to the kitchen at the Gilbert house. She pours herself a glass of water with shaky hands, fighting the wave of dizziness that nearly flattens her.

She can't let Jeremy or the others see her like this.

They had enough on their plate with Silas was running around town trying to snatch Elena for god only knew what dark purpose. While Damon and Stefan spent nearly every hour of the day safeguarding the doppelganger, she, Bonnie, had been charged with discovering Silas' origins and weaknesses. And when the Grimoires yielded little to nothing, she'd had to resort to sending message after message to the Spirits in the hope that some hand would reach back and deliver the knowledge they all needed. But communing with the Spirits was taxing magic, especially when they're being taciturn.

Sometimes she wonders if they're still angry at her for failing her appointed task two years ago to kill-

"Klaus," she starts a little as the hybrid strolls casually into the kitchen as though materialized from her thoughts. The idea of him being their reluctant ally against Silas, and therefore invited into spaces he had no business being, is still a new one. Bonnie doesn't think she'll ever get accustomed to turning corners and finding him there, alive and immortal and coolly arrogant, reminding her how she'd once yielded the power of a hundred witches and still failed.

"Why are you here?" she asks, feeling a hum of panic beneath her fingers. "Did something happen to-,"

He eyes the decor around him with mild distaste. "Calm your witchy nerves, love. Last I saw her the doppelgänger was safe and sound in her natural habitat."

She raises an eyebrow.

"Between two brothers," he says, with a blithe smile. His eyes flick lightly over her, making her hasten to be anywhere but in his line of sight.

"Thanks for the intel," she says dryly before turning to leave, only to have his question arrest her.

"And how was your little spell?"

His tone is casual, like he's asking about the weather or what she had for lunch. But she knows better. He's playing nice with everyone at the moment because he, like the others, believes she'll find a magical solution to their problem. At the first sign of weakness the mask would drop, and he would be the same Klaus whose very name had once struck them blind with fear. There would be no telling what he'd do.

"It went fine," she says, keeping her voice light.

"The Spirits were talkative, I presume?" he asks, making her grind her teeth. "Gave you access to _Encyclopedia Killing Silas_ perhaps?"

She turns slowly to face him, determined to show no sign of weakness. "I'll find a way to defeat Silas, with or without their help. I'm resourceful," she adds archly, bidding him remember the time she'd nearly melted the flesh off his bones. "You should know that by now."

He closes the distance between them in a slow, sauntering way that makes her tense up, ready for fight or flight. She's alone in this house with her magic depleted. And there's a wolf in the kitchen.

Klaus comes to a stop in front of her, his voice becoming a murmur, as though they're sharing a secret. "And resources can become extinguished with time. _You_ should know that by now, little witch." His fingers tug lightly at the sleeve of her sweater, close to her wrist, where telltale drops of blood stain the pink wool.

His large hand, so close to hers, emanates a faint electricity that causes her magic to stand at attention, sensing something it can cleave to, something to feed on. Klaus is watching her closely, an unreadable look on his face.

"Bonnie?" Jeremy's voice, piqued with concern, breaks the moment. She hastens to distance herself from the hybrid as Jeremy crosses the living room in quick strides. She feels inexplicably guilty.

Her boyfriend puts a protective arm around her, all muscle and warmth and a familiarity she turns gratefully into as he peers down at her with concern. "What's he doing here? Are you ok?"

"I'm fine," she says, managing a smile. "Klaus just stopped by to see how the spell went."

"I'm sure she'll regale you with the details of her success," the hybrid drawls, eyeing her briefly before retracting his steps and disappearing out the kitchen door. His knowing smile, however, lingers in her mind even after he's gone.

Jeremy cups her face in both hands. "You _sure_ you're okay?"

She nods quickly but firmly, extricating herself. "Hey, wanna heat up some leftovers?"

"Sure...," he says, rubbing the back of his neck. "I'll get started."

Pecking him on the cheek, Bonnie hastens into the bathroom and splashes cold water on her face, reorienting herself and compelling her wayward magic to settle itself. Her hand still tingles where it almost touched Klaus.

With near obsessive fervor, she sticks her sleeve under the faucet and scrubs away the small marks of her blood.

* * *

Katherine Petrova is dead.

Stefan brings him the news while he's midway through a new painting, making his brush halt in a puddle of violet.

Silas had found her, Stefan tells him. He'd caught her, and separated her head from her body before dropping it in the waters beneath Wickery Bridge. The rest of her he'd pulled apart into pieces and deposited them in front of various auspicious buildings - city hall, the church, the bell tower - in a ritualistic spree that reminds Klaus of decapitating the body of an enemy so they could never receive a burial rite, so they could never return to wholeness.

He almost admires the man.

But Stefan's troubled face tells him this is the wrong reaction, so he smooths his own countenance into a placid, inquiring kind of look. In any case, he can't have someone else running about painting the town red with doppelgänger blood. That's _his_ job.

Stefan continues, outlining their plan to use all the vampire strength they can marshall between him, Damon and Klaus to capture Silas while he's in Shane's body and then expel his Spirit, leaving him bereft of a physical form with which to hunt Elena while they looked for a more permanent solution.

"That latter part will require quite a bit of magic," Klaus says with a sidelong glance, thinking of a small hand, and a sweater sleeve flecked with blood.

"Bonnie will find a way. She always does."

Klaus shrugs, hiding a smile before filling a glass with Stefan's favored cognac. The liquid glow reflects in the younger vampire's eyes.

Stefan shifts his feet. "I should get going. Elena's pretty freaked out-,"

"I would imagine," the hybrid says, coolly. In his opinion, the doppelgänger could benefit from a few more healthy bouts of existential terror. Klaus keeps the sarcasm in his voice to a dignified minimum."The Ripper of Monterey, indoors and retiring before eleven o'clock. How novel."

He relishes the little flash in the younger vampire's eyes. He wonders how often Elena watches for that same flash with fear.

"So you'll help us catch him for the exorcism? Like we agreed?"

"Wouldn't miss it for the world," Klaus says, raising the glass to sip the cognac himself. He'd developed a taste for the liquor in Chicago after crossing paths with the Ripper, and for years after he could barely catch a whiff without being assailed with sharp, sensual memory. It tastes the same now, unperturbed by time. But the allure of history turns briefly sour, and Klaus sets the glass down to return to his canvas with its streaks of bleeding violet. "You can see yourself out I'm sure."

* * *

The illustrations on the Grimoire leave little do the imagination.

Bonnie stares mutely. Caroline's eyebrows are trying to disappear into her hairline. Elena looks slightly ill.

The three of them are shut up in Elena's bedroom, burning some sage for quiet while Stefan and Damon keep watch downstairs. In the basement, trapped in Shane's body, Silas is chained to the wall, awaiting his exorcism. But the ritual requires at least twice the magical energy Bonnie currently carried and she knew, with a sinking stomach, that they only had one option.

She would have to channel Klaus.

Elena is the first to speak. "There has to be another way."

"Discharging this amount of energy would kill a human in under a minute. Regular vampires could last an hour _maybe_ ," Bonnie points out, keeping her voice calm and practical to avoid the quiet screaming inside her own head. "But Klaus -"

"It's Klaus," Caroline interjects, gesturing at a particularly graphic drawing of a witch straddling her vampire consort while little silver lines of energy glowed under her skin. "You'd have to do _this_ with Klaus."

Bonnie snatches the book and turns to another page only to be greeted by a similar drawing, this time of a warlock and a male vampire very robustly getting each other off. She tosses the Grimoire aside with a sigh. "I don't have to screw Klaus to channel him, that's for really huge spells, like breaking a sire line or undoing ancient spells. For this...," she tries to sound casual, "he'd barely have to hold my hand."

"Isn't there someone else you could channel?" Elena asks, sitting down beside her, brown eyes earnest and troubled.

"Another vampire-werewolf hybrid over a thousand years old?" Bonnie says dryly. Besides, even if there were, there's no telling if her magic will _want_ to channel them. Elena and Caroline don't know that it's the magic itself that chooses certain sources over others, and for some reason hers has chosen Klaus. How could she explain something to them she didn't understand herself?

"But he'd have to...be inside you, wouldn't he?" Elena asks with a shudder. "His energy I mean. What if it affects you somehow?" she says, looking to Caroline for support. The blonde nods vigorously.

"Then we'll deal with that after we deal with Silas," Bonnie says, rising to her feet. "Look, we can sit here and speculate all we want, or we can take our best shot against the guy who decapitated Katherine Petrova and is probably coming for you next."

It's Caroline who poses the quiet question. "What about Jeremy?"

Bonnie twitches a little, her hand curling into itself. "What about him?"

"Channelling someone sounds like a pretty intimate experience," Caroline continues, exchanging a glance with Elena. "You sure Jeremy's gonna be okay watching you siphon Klaus' mystical essence or whatever?"

"Considering our relationship survived him kissing his ex-girlfriend's ghost, I'm pretty sure we can handle me standing close to another guy to save his sister's life."

This has the desired effect of silencing any further protests.

A year later and she's still uncomfortable discussing Jeremy around them, largely because she knows they both disapproved of her rekindling her relationship with the young hunter. In their eyes, his transgression with Anna had forever marked him unworthy of her affection. But they didn't know - how could they? - what it's like to always be the afterthought, the collateral damage. For despite the losses they'd endured Elena and Caroline always had a flurry of loving arms to hold them in the land of the living. They didn't know what it was like to crave a ghost's touch after the white-hot loneliness of another day without someone you loved.

Bonnie tosses her Grimoire into her backpack and slings it over her shoulder. "Come on, let's get this over with so we can actually graduate high school this year."

* * *

Despite her bravado, a frisson of fear travels her spine as she comes face to face with Silas in the shadowy basement. Shane's face is twisted into a cold mask as he watches her pour salt around him before taking her position.

Can she do it? Tear a soul from flesh and fling it naked into the ether?

" _If_ you lot don't mind, Bonnie and I would appreciate some privacy." His drawling voice precedes him. Sauntering to her side, Klaus drapes an arm around her waist and draws her close. "Go on, clear out," he commands the others with a dimpled grin. She wants terribly to scratch the pleased smirk off his face, but the sparks already dancing along her skin where his arm touches her is a reminder enough.

She offers Jeremy a comforting smile that does little to ease the tension in his frame. Stefan puts a hand on his shoulder, while Elena huddles close to her brother with some inaudible, placating words. In the corner of the room, Damon drinks heavily from a small flask, his eyes hard as ice as he surveys the chained man. She'd heard from Elena that Katherine's murder had shaken him more than he cared to admit. A few feet away, Caroline stands with folded arms, and though her forehead wears a frown of deep worry she manages a hesitant smile of encouragement when Bonnie catches her eye.

Bonnie feels that hot, heavy weight on her chest that's become familiar whenever she performs important magic. For better or worse the people gathered in this basement, this ill-assorted crew of humans and supernaturals with their grudges and quirks and passions, were the only home she's ever known. For them, she could put herself in the crossfire over and over, could summon courage from the deepest, darkest pit to fling at their enemies.

("Where do you want me, love?" Klaus' breath tickles her ear, inducing a shiver she can't seem to shake.)

Could even, when the need arose, collaborate with one enemy to destroy another.

Bonnie shifts out of his grasp and indicates a spot just outside the circle of salt. "Stand there until I need you."

He obeys lazily, but his eyes stay fixed on her as she begins.

The candles come to life, the wind howls, and the spell takes shape.

* * *

The consequence of having lived a thousand years is that Time itself begins to feel like ritual, a recurring motif of agony and sacrifice and blood, a spiral of desires and consequences that repeats without any inkling of an end. A thousand years ago, under his father's command, his brothers had chained him between two trees they used to climb as boys, so his mother could reach inside him with magic and chain the half of his soul that reflected her transgression.

And a thousand years later, his soul restored with blood and fire, Klaus finds himself returned to ritual. They're all here, the players transmuted and restored: Elena, a mirror for Esther's self-indulgence. Stefan the self-flagellating monster, an iteration of Elijah. Caroline, so much like Rebekah, naive and easily bruised by the world; Damon, half-Kol and half-Mikael, the shadow in the corner poised to remind them all of their true nature. And Silas, the monster, shackled to the wall, trying to keep his soul intact.

In the candlelight, history revives. But there's one, small difference:

 _Bonnie Bennett._

Try as he might he can't place her in the retinue. She'd nearly killed him: a feat that no other could boast except his own father. And yet, unlike Mikael, it wasn't hatred for him that had driven her rage, but love. A stormy, blinding love for the people she called her own. A love that spent itself over and over, without question or hesitation.

His history, his life, have retained no words with which to define her.

It's what makes her equal parts dangerous and compelling.

"Give me your hand," she says, with a prim little gesture. He obliges, noting the warmth that blooms in her face with satisfaction. Her magic feeds and feeds, all teeth and eagerness, an amusing contrast to her usual facade.

His amusement melts swiftly when she begins to chant, digging magical hooks into Shane's flesh to pry forth the invading soul.

He's not blind to the tense glares and suspicious fear - spearheaded by Gilbert Jr - directed at him by the other people in the room that seem to form a bubble around the witch. They understand her perhaps even less than he does, and so they contain her and corral her, starve her of things only they can provide. They don't see the hunger in her that only shows itself in magic, that calls to him so clearly it's unfathomable how they don't hear it.

And so when he sees her faltering mere seconds from the spell's completion, he closes the distance between them and takes her face in his hands.

* * *

She's so close, she can feel it. Silas' soul is coming untethered, she just needs a few more minutes.

Bonnie muffles a cry of frustration, staggering a little as the soul tries to writhe from her grasp and bury back inside Shane's body.

Then Klaus is standing before her, between her and Silas. She can't quite read the hybrid's face but his eyes are alight, focused so keenly on her that were it not for the concerned murmurs she hears behind her she would think they were alone in the room.

Before she can move, his mouth touches hers in a soft, lingering kiss. The tenderness of the gesture turns her feet to stone. Klaus brushes a tendril of hair from her face, his voice a murmur. "Finish it."

When he pulls away, the last bit of power she needs is flaring up her spine.

He returns to his spot, and Bonnie tightens the spell.

With an animal cry, the soul is torn from flesh. Shane sags against the wall.

She catches a glimpse of Klaus' face, not smiling, not smirking, but simply regarding her as though he understands something she doesn't need to relay. Then, Elena and Caroline and Jeremy are rushing to surround her, the Hunter drawing her into a bear hug, and when they move aside Klaus is gone.

* * *

 _ **Two Weeks Later**_

Bonnie glances at her phone, frowning a little at the time. The text from Elena insists she meet her at the Salvatore boarding house, and that it concerns Silas.

Two weeks, two precious weeks of quiet had elapsed since the exorcism and her life had almost regained a semblance of routine. Just a few seconds ago, she'd been comfortably dozing in Jeremy's arms to the sound of their _Law & Order_ marathon. Her boyfriend's head rests against the back of the couch, eyes closed, while his t-shirt covered chest rises and falls in deep, even breaths. She'd stolen his sweatshirt for herself hours ago.

The sight of him causes a troubled pang as she debates whether to wake him.

She'd tried to bring up what happened with Klaus a few times, but Jeremy had stopped her, telling her it wasn't worth talking about, and that all that mattered was that she'd ejected Silas and emerged unscathed. It wasn't even really a kiss, he'd pointed out. It was the equivalent of someone reloading a gun. Why should they turn it into a bigger deal than it really was?

The analogy was a poor one: a gun being cold metal, not responsive skin. And magic was no bullet, it was akin to breathing. But realizing that Jeremy was determined to put the incident behind them, she relented, and stifled the nagging desire to make him understand - she was hardly sure what. She needed him to know - _something_. About herself, the burning sense of duty she felt towards him, towards all of them. The weight of her powers. About the relief, in a moment when she was about to buckle under, of being able to reach out her hand and find strength and safety. Yes, even if they were wrapped up in Klaus.

Jeremy won't hear any of it. And, sometimes in the dark corners of her mind, she wonders if he'd even understand if he did. But he's her boyfriend, he's one of the few things she can call hers, and she wants so desperately for that to remain so.

It's why in the end she decides not to wake him, but simply covers him with a blanket and kisses him lightly on the lips before putting on her coat.

The boarding house is empty except for Elena and, surprisingly, Shane. Bonnie's still uneasy around the man who's carried Silas' soul in his body, but she proffers him a smile and asks awkwardly about his day as they draw near the coffee table.

"Shane thinks he knows how to make Silas go away once and for all," Elena begins, with a peculiar, fervent glow to her face that Bonnie's never seen. She clasps her hands together, her brown eyes almost feverish. "But...it's going to need magic. _Lots_ of magic."

Bonnie's sits heavily down on the couch. "I'm listening."

* * *

 _ **A/N:**_ _I know what you're thinking: this bish doesn't update any of her ongoing stories for months and then drops a brand new multichapter? Look, life's been a bit crazy. My computer broke, and my girlfriend got really sick for a while which caused me lots of stress and sadness. Additionally, academia is a hellhole and the new semester is taking a huge toll on my mental health. To deal with all that, I've been nursing this AU for weeks now and (you'll be relieved to know) have written practically the entire story. In fact I'm working on Part 6 and the Epilogue right now. So don't worry, you won't be left hanging! And if editing goes smoothly, I'm aiming for weekly updates on this. In the meantime, I'll also be working on updates for "a case of you" and other WIPs._

 _I say this is a post-S3 AU in the loosest sense possible. But basically, like most of my canon-based stories, it's AU after TVD 3X18 when Bonnie unlinks the Mikaelson siblings. This story is set roughly a year after, give or take. It originally began as a drabble I wrote as a birthday gift for the wonderful cheleonrage on Tumblr, and the story just demanded expansion so here we are._

 _Thank you for bearing with me, and please do let me know your thoughts in the reviews!_


	2. Chapter 2

**part 2/7: altar**

* * *

"When he was in my head...," Shane begins, and winces a little as though the memory is a knife.

Bonnie recalls the hellish screams of the exorcism and wonders who shared the brunt of that agony, Silas' soul or Shane's body.

Elena nudges a glass of water in Shane's direction. "It's okay...take your time," she says, gently.

He shoots her a grateful look before speaking. "It's difficult to remember everything, so much of the time I was just trapped in a corner of my own mind, watching things unfold, watching him do...terrible things," he pauses to take a drink and sets the glass down with a shaky hand before continuing, "But there were some things he couldn't hide from me, some motives that were...too strong. And one of those is is his love for this one girl, the original doppelgänger: Amara."

Shane continues, detailing the pieces of memory he'd salvaged from Silas' mind. How Silas had fallen in love with a young handmaiden named Amara. How his love for this girl ran so deep and consuming he'd turned his back on his betrothed, Qetsiyah, a powerful witch, and stolen for himself and Amara the Immortality Spell that Qetsiyah had prepared for their wedding. Enraged by his betrayal, Qetsiyah had cursed them both: Silas she had imprisoned in a state of limbo between the world of the living and the dead, helpless and stripped of his body while Amara, the one who'd stolen her lover, she'd cursed to never know love again, but to die and be reborn forever a vessel, a tool for men and monsters. And so the doppelgängers came into being, and for centuries Silas watched the image of the woman he loved be born and flower and fall in love with men who weren't him, and always inevitably face betrayal and death. Now, having torn free from his prison, in blinding rage, Silas sought to wipe all images of Amara from earth. Katherine was the beginning. Elena would be the end. That is, until a new doppelgänger was born. Born to die again.

"So he won't stop until he kills Elena," Bonnie surmises, tiredly. "And the doppelgänger after her, and the one after that-,"

"Yes, but, if Qetsiyah's spell could be broken," Shane says, his eyes glittering with hope. "If we extinguish the line of doppelgängers, then Amara's soul would be freed from that tether, and Silas would follow her into the beyond."

Bonnie reaches for some water of her own. Her head spins and a hundred questions whirl around her brain. Through it all, she sees Elena's face imploring as a beacon.

"Elena...if we do this spell, you won't be a doppelgänger anymore," she says, hardly able to believe it herself. "You'll be-,"

"Just Elena Gilbert," the brunette cuts in with a radiant smile. "No one's going to hunt me for revenge or- or try to sacrifice me to break curses -," she pauses, rolling her eyes a little, "or obsess over me because I look exactly like their ex-girlfriend from the sixteenth century."

"You'll just be...you," Bonnie finishes, with a smile.

"I can be a cheerleader again, and finish school, and have a normal love life-,"

"And you'll be the last of your kind," Shane adds. "There'll be no more doppelgangers after you."

"I'll be free," Elena beams.

"And you're sure this will make Silas leave?" Bonnie presses. "He'll go away, permanently?"

Shane nods, slowly, and Bonnie notices the new lines under his eyes. "The curse will be broken, and Silas' soul will find Amara's, and they'll go- wherever they're meant to."

There's a silence broken only by the crackling flames.

At last, Elena speaks again. "But...Shane says this spell would need a ton of magical energy-,"

"I'd have to channel Klaus." Bonnie says, looking down at her glass and suddenly wishing it contained a stronger beverage. "And he'd definitely need to do more than hold my hand." She tries not to recall the vivid images from her Grimoire, tries even harder to forget the infernal tenderness of his mouth on hers in that basement. She would be losing her virginity to Klaus. Lying down with him, letting him touch her-

"No," Elena declares, looking between her and Shane. "That's sick. There's no way I'm going to ask you to do something like that for me. We have to find another-,"

"Unfortunately, we don't have much time," Shane cuts in, quietly. "It won't be long before he invades another body. He isn't thinking clearly, he's demented from centuries of imprisonment, and -" he turns to Elena with a look of pity, " - as far as he's concerned, your existence is an insult to Amara. That's why he - why he did what he did to Katherine."

Bonnie hadn't personally seen the entrails of the former doppelganger decorating the steps of city hall, but she'd heard plenty about it from her dad along with threats of a new curfew and not-so-subtle admonishments about "dabbling in that supernatural nonsense".

"There's always a loophole, right?" Elena insists, in a pleading voice. "Look, Qetsiyah is your ancestor, isn't she? Can't you...ask her for help? Through the Spirits?"

"That's...not really how it works, 'Lena," Bonnie says gently. "The Spirits haven't exactly been communicative lately. Besides, if Qetisyah was pissed enough to create a Curse this profound, I doubt she's going to undo it just because I ask nicely."

No, there isn't a loophole. This time, Bonnie knows, she'll have to pay the price with her eyes wide open. _Finish it_ , as he'd said before he kissed her in that strange, gentle way that unnerved her more than his violence. But on the other side of that price - on the other side is the smell of fresh-cut grass, and punching the air with a pom-pom, and kissing Jeremy under the stars by the homecoming bonfire. All the _Law & Order _marathons they desire. All the things she'd once had, all the things she still wants to believe she can have. A normal life, without monsters, without magic.

Like Jeremy said, it's reloading a gun. She's just a weapon needing enough power to fulfill her purpose. No one needs to know, and after it was done, after Elena was safe, after they were all free, no one would care to ask how. They'd never have to see or hear from Klaus ever again. Years of happy normalcy would wheel overhead. One terrible night, for a lifetime of halcyon days. No one needs to know. Not Elena, not anyone.

Resolved in her decision, Bonnie turns to Elena and feigns a bright smile. "But...I have another idea. I'll need some of your blood."

* * *

"So...do we have a deal?"

Standing in his drawing room, Bonnie fidgets in equal parts irritation and anxiety, watching Klaus turn over the cask of Elena's blood, his long fingers tracing the length of the ruby-colored glass. Enough blood to make a hundred hybrids, should he so desire. Enough blood so that once this is over, once Elena is no longer a doppelgänger and she, Bonnie, no longer compelled by sisterly duty to safeguard her against endless threats, he could be on his way, him and his army of fellow monsters, to wheresoever they chose.

"I must say, love, I'm feeling rather objectified," he proffers with an innocent smile. "I at least expected to be taken out to dinner. Perhaps even some flowers," he says, holding up the cask of blood, eyes gleaming with mischief. "But I suppose this will have to do." He sweeps an arm towards the massive spiral staircase, his voice all husky with amusement, "Shall we?"

"Oh the bedrooms are upstairs," he clarifies when she stares at him in confusion. "Unless of course you'd prefer I ravish you on the rug."

His casual hauteur is maddening. Her eyes drift to said rug before she quickly smothers the image he'd conjured. She focuses instead on the pokers next to the fireplace, and indulges a brief fantasy of stabbing him in the eye with one, before marshalling her face into the semblance of a smile. "Lead the way."

"You know, that rug is priceless. An antique really," he says, sauntering close to her with a grin. "Kings and empresses have lain upon it. In case you fancied a touch of history."

She frowns in confusion. "What?"

"I thought you would like some portion of this night to be memorable," he says, his voice gone suddenly, disarmingly soft. "Although, I suppose losing one's virginity to a sworn enemy isn't something you're likely to forget."

Anger bubbles inside her and she flushes from head to toe as she realizes the futility of denial. Her reaction has already given her away. "That is _none_ of your business-,"

He towers above her, his gaze so heavy she finds it almost unbearable.

"Tell me, is there anything you won't sacrifice for them?"

Craning her neck so she can look him square in the eye, Bonnie tries to keep her voice steady, resolute. "No."

Something unreadable flashes across his face. He cocks his head to the side, his voice light with mockery. "And what of them? How much are they willing to ask of you?"

"No one is forcing me to be here," she says, evenly.

"No of course not," he says, circling her slowly. "Let me hazard a guess: the doppelgänger came to you with an impossible proposition, wringing her hands and lamenting that she couldn't _possibly_ ask you for such a favor. Gilbert the younger, I presume, knows nothing of this little task you've undertaken, and in truth does not desire to know," he pauses behind her, and the heat that emanates from him tugs subtly at her magic. "How am I doing so far?" he murmurs.

She feels her jaw click as she fights to maintain composure. "Why are you doing this?"

"Why are _you_?"

She turns to face him, meeting his quiet smirk. He's so close she can reach out to touch the strange necklaces he's wearing under his grey Henley, can reach out and feel the beat of a thousand year old heart. Why must it be _him_ her magic is drawn to?

Fists clenched at her sides she takes a deep, steadying breath and lifts her chin. "What, Klaus Mikaelson suddenly has trouble understanding the concept of a _means to an end_?"

A slow half-smile appears on his face, and he eyes her long and intently. "It is you I don't understand, little witch." His voice, devoid of jest, has a strange affect on her. "Why _them_? What did they do, to earn your devotion?"

"You really don't get it, do you? It's not about _earning_."

"Enlighten me then," he demands, his eyes dark and strange.

"They're my family," she says, without thinking. "And that's what you do for family."

The cool and distant mask of his face slips a little, revealing a naked flash that unsettles her, like she's stumbled onto intimate ground.

"So we both agree, about what...this is," she says as her magic, incited by her agitation and his nearness, runs hot as fever beneath her skin. "Its like- like a business deal. Elena will be safe, I'll have a life and... you'll finally have your hybrid army."

For a moment she wonders if she's ruined it all, if he'll show her the door and laugh in her face. His expression reveals nothing, and the slow smile that tugs at his mouth doesn't reach his eyes.

"Well then, let's not delay," he says holding out his hand. "It would appear we are both on the brink of a new beginning."

Her eager magic dances along her fingertips, trying to reach what it senses is achingly close, until she digs her fingernails into the soft flesh of her palms in an effort to restrain it. She hesitates one last time. "Will you tell anyone about this?" she asks.

His brows rise slightly. "Would they believe me if I did?"

She gives a stiff nod and they climb the stairs side by side, but she can't quell the disconcerting feeling that they've entered into more than one kind of agreement, more than one kind of understanding.

* * *

His room is smaller than she imagined, which is unfortunate.

She'd hoped for a space as cavernous and impassive as the rest of the mansion whose contours she'd barely be able to grasp, much less remember afterwards. Instead, there's disarming evidence of a daily routine scattered about: a small table plied with sketchbooks and pencils and a half empty decanter of whiskey, a few shirts tossed over an elegant settee, and an open book face down beside the pillows on his bed as though he'd placed it there before rolling over into sleep.

Bonnie suddenly wishes she hadn't been so hasty in turning down the rug. It feels a far safer option than this. The feeling increases as she watches him walk to the closet, dropping his jacket on the floor. She hears the metallic sound of a safe being opened and shut before he reemerges, the cask of blood clearly secured away.

He's taken off his shoes, and as he ambles towards her half-shadowed in the light of the low-burning fire, barefoot, his posture indolent and yet purposeful, full of a leonine grace, she feels a sudden wave of panic crash over her.

"Let's keep our clothes on," she blurts when he comes to a stop in front of her.

He raises an eyebrow, but sidles closer and bends as if to kiss her.

But she preempts him. "And - no kissing. It'll be better that way...establishing boundaries. Not getting our wires crossed...,"

She's babbling, and she hates it, hates how flustered she's become in mere seconds. Between her nerves, and her traitorous magic running riot, she feels the situation slipping swiftly out of her control.

"Anything else?" he asks in a sardonic voice, walking her steadily backwards until she feels the table edge against her thighs.

"No leaving marks-," her sentence breaks off with a gasp when, without warning, he lifts her onto the table. Scrambling for purchase, her hands land on his shoulders.

"What are you doing?!"

"With a few notable exceptions, 'business deals' as you called them are _usually_ carried out on tables, love," he says, head cocked to the side with a look of infuriating innocence. "But if you'd rather I take you to my bed-,"

"This is fine," she mutters, fuming and frantic all at once. She's _not_ going to cower and wilt before his experience. That would yield too much, shape this encounter into something real. This is business, she tells herself. I mean, they aren't even in a bed.

Steeled with resolve, she reaches for his belt and tugs on the buckle. Once, twice. The belt remains in tact. Her hands fumble in the semi-darkness before he finally captures one and brings it to his lips. Little shivers of feeling run down her arm and she squirms in her spot, flushed with embarrassment and the thrum of her magic. Klaus chuckles softly against her skin, and she briefly considers lighting his jeans on fire. See how amusing he finds _that_. But that would break her own rule of staying as clothed as possible. Bonnie finds her panic returning threefold.

He's sensed her floundering of course, she can tell by the lazy, triumphant manner in which he continues to kiss along her hand. She braces herself for his next move, for something frightening and predatory.

Klaus sinks to his knees between her legs.

* * *

 _ **A/N:** I had to cut it here for pacing reasons, but tune in next week to see me embarrass myself with emotional smut bye. Hope you guys still liked the chapter and my take on the whole Silas/ Amara/ Qetsiyah mess that Shane is tangled in. Thank you for all you reviews, favorites and follows; you guys make the writing worthwhile. Let me know your thoughts as always! xoxox_


	3. Chapter 3

**_A/N_ : **_Trigger warning for mentions of child abuse._

* * *

 **part 3/7: sacrifice**

* * *

He wants to taste her.

Centuries as a monster have accustomed him to profaning that which others hold sacred, seizing what they felt should lie beyond his reach, revelling in the transgression.

And to have Bonnie Bennett - righteous champion of the weak, virtuous defender of his enemies - perched on the edge of his drawing table needing something only he can give her, feels like a victory of the headiest kind.

She's come dressed for a funeral, the little prude. Dark sweater, dark dress that hangs below her knees. As though she's refusing this night everything, even color. As though she can stuff what's about to happen between them into a casket and bury it unmarked. A requiem for her old life as it were.

Klaus takes his time stroking the length of her calves, running his nose up along the smooth skin. One mustn't _rush_ desecration.

He can feel the tension in her muscles, the fine tremors she's trying bravely to downplay. Her hands are gripping the table ledge tight enough to turn her knuckles white.

He pauses to note a sprinkle of fine scars on both her knees, like tiny constellations. He's always drawn to the character of such marks. How they become as definitive of a person as blood or fingerprints. He found unblemished skin unnatural, unsettling even. He knows every one of his siblings' scars by sight, could single them out in a mountain of corpses if needed.

He runs his thumbs over the witch's knees, causing her to start and nearly unseat herself. Klaus repeats the gesture, earning the same reaction. He never chose lovers who were unmarked. He would not know how to touch such a being.

She tries to jerk her legs away but his grip is firm, so she settles for an exasperated sigh. "Can we just...get on with it?"

"Very well," he murmurs, before laving her knees with his tongue, feeling her tremble and fail to bite back a gasp. His mouth worships whatever painful history resides there, his tongue and lips revering the place where her skin had been cut open and reformed, making her breath hitch until finally she whispers a strangled, "Stop."

Klaus obeys, nosing her thighs until the tremors subside. He then pulls her abruptly towards his mouth.

* * *

 _She was six years old the summer that Abby Bennett disappeared._

 _Rudy Bennett, whose gentle and hesitant nature had happily buckled under his wife's stronger will, suddenly found himself set adrift with a small and frightened child in tow. While Sheila had set off in search of her daughter, a distraught and fearful Rudy had implored his brother Ralph in South Carolina to care for Bonnie for a time._

 _Uncle Ralph had two passions in life: planting perfect rows in his garden, and the Bible. He had all but disowned his younger brother for choosing to marry a witch, and he saw Bonnie as a ticking time bomb of sin and vice. He kept a close eye on her as his wife Lorna enforced a rigid routine of chores and Bible study, but when he found Bonnie in the garden coaxing a bluebell out of the ground with her magic he snapped. Bonnie found herself dragged into the kitchen by her ear. There was a scattering sound as he emptied a small bag of rice onto the floor and then she found herself forced to kneel. Each little grain burrowed into her tender skin, the pain growing more acute as the minutes ticked on. Fat tears rolled down her face, but Uncle Ralph was unmoved. He sat across from her reading the Bible out loud, and she wasn't allowed to rise until he was finished two hours later. On the third day of this punishment, when her knees were a web of small wounds, Aunt Lorna burst in and pulled her off the floor, chastising her husband for his extremism. A few days after that, Rudy took her back to Mystic Falls._

 _Her knees healed, leaving a small galaxy of scars as the only physical remnant of three days of forced penance. But ever after, Bonnie had driven herself with a desire to prove Uncle Ralph wrong, to use her magic for good and noble intentions, to wield it like an angelic shield before those who needed its protection. Anything else, anything selfish, would prove Ralph right. Anything else, was unforgivable._

* * *

Her head spins. She didn't think it was possible to feel so illicit while fully clothed.

Any notion she'd harbored about this being a mundane transaction had melted when Klaus kneeled before her, and now, as his mouth inches closer to her core, she's scrambling for steady ground. Part of her wants to push him away, jump off this table and never return. Another, sterner part reminds her of her duty, of why she needs to see this through. It's the part she cleaves to, the same one that had earned her the scars on her knees. But duty and loyalty have accustomed her to enduring pain for the sake of the greater good, not pleasure, not anything like this. She expected Klaus would be brusque, even violent. She can live with that, live _through_ that. But the strange, intense fluttering in her belly as she feels him move her panties to the side, exposing her, his breath fanning her sensitive skin - she isn't quite sure how to reason with.

Bonnie clamps her mouth shut and grips the table until her fingers go numb as his tongue begins tasting her lightly and playfully the way one might strawberries, making her magic dance and swirl in her veins. A feverish warmth spreads from her core to the rest of her body and she shakes from the effort of trying to remain still, of not giving him anything - not one, single thing. She's resolved to be a statue, something made of stone. Or a gun, inanimate metal just like Jeremy had said, nothing to be jealous of, nothing-

"Ah-,"

\- Klaus presses a hot, hungry kiss to her center, giving her no time to breathe or collect herself as he lavishes her folds with the kisses she'd forbidden him to place on her mouth. She has to muffle a cry. It's like swallowing glass. His lips and tongue probe and lick and suck and lave her until she can barely think. She isn't sure how many minutes pass. She's dissolving in his mouth, piece by piece. A desperate whimper escapes her as the orgasm cuts like a knife.

She's still shuddering when Klaus stands over her again, one hand at the small of her back edging her closer to the edge of the table so she feels him hard against her thigh. His eyes darken as his other hand wraps tenderly around her throat. "Say my name," he demands with cruel softness, "No one needs to know."

Bonnie's breath trembles in her lungs. She feels like she's holding back sobs, but her body is convulsing in pleasure. If magic is moonlight, she thinks she might be choking on the cold, bright shards of it.

But it isn't enough. The spell requires more power than she's ever wielded before except when she had a hundred witches running through her veins. She tries to think of the other side of this, the other life she's reaching for, to let it steal over her like a balm and soothe the cutting pleasure. He's watching her, cupping her throat like a jewel, waiting for her to lash out, to lose control.

She decides to take a page out of his book.

His eyes follow her while she leans back on her elbows. Bonnie smiles up at him, inclining her neck into his hand, and parts her legs.

"Klaus," she says his name slowly, feeling his hold tighten. The air seems to shift and change, like she's begun an incantation. And for a moment, his mask slips and she sees the naked hunger he clothes so well in mockery and disdain. It sends a strange chill coursing through her, a dark anticipation.

She shifts her hips closer to him. "Finish it."

* * *

 _Why, the little_ -

Her mouth coats his name in honey and her eyes both challenge and allure him. Martyr to the end, for the sake of her cause in a moment she's gone from cold self-denial into the very image of sensuous enticement, the most perfect supplication, offered up freely on behalf of those she called family.

He should scorn it, scorn her. By rights he should be laughing in the face of such naivete, such submission, such absolute devotion to something outside of oneself.

Instead, he is transfixed.

Desire twists in his gut as he none too gently pushes her legs further apart and positions himself between them. She's still wet from his earlier attention as he drags his cock along her entrance, as he crudely moves her underwear aside to slide inside her. She freezes, bracing herself for pain. So he takes care to move slow, rolling his hips to ease himself in and out of her far gentler than either of them fancies, albeit for entirely different reasons. She would rather everything be quick and brutal and easily smothered. And so, ever the antagonist, he's tender and careful as he fills her slowly, inch by inch, in a deliberate and languid siege. Her eyes flash bright with anger and confusion, and he knows she hates him more for giving her pleasure instead of pain.

No matter. She can hate him all she wants. Her magic is candid enough for both of them, latching on to him, appetite meeting appetite.

Klaus rains open-mouthed kisses along her neck and shoulders, savoring the little sparks of magic that dance delightedly at his touch, the small gasps she can't quite contain. If its power she wants, he will oblige her. Her dress slips a little, revealing the swell of small, full breasts covered in a nondescript black bra. The simple modesty of it riles him in ways he'd rather not examine.

She's slick and tight and instantly addictive. Beneath his hand, her throat moves with little gasps she does her best to muffle, even as her thighs spread wider, even as he buries himself to the hilt and strokes her from the inside out. Her back arches up, her skin glowing from the influx of magic and arousal, and her small hands clutch at his shirt in both plea and protest. For a few moments there is only the sound of heavy breathing and damp flesh sliding along flesh as they fall into a hard, half-broken rhythm. Her thighs clamp around him as she allows him - incites him - have his way with her without remonstrance or restraint.

Hunger is an old addiction, and hers...hers reaches down to his bones. It's enough to drive him to madness.

A moan escapes her, a sweet little sound that makes him jerk his hips savagely forward as he ruts into her with a kind of blind want he hasn't felt in eons, losing himself by degrees, feeling his eyes burn amber and the wolf emerge. Klaus reluctantly releases her throat to take hold of her thighs in both hands, keeping her exactly where he wants - no, _needs_ \- her to be. It feels like a concession, a yielding, but he is past caring. He looks down at her with the beast's face, yellow eyes and elongated fangs, and watches her expression freeze into something- something like shocked wonder. The next instant he feels her tighten around him, and she moans again, this time the sound turning into a soft keening as her body now surges up to meet his. Wolf and witch, magic and animal, rising together in a dangerous high.

"Oh my god," she gasps, her nails digging into the flesh of his upper arms as the magic pulses and glows in her skin.

* * *

She wants him to bite her.

The wild thought seizes her mind while she's at her height, and won't let go. Each time his eyes burn yellow and his fangs catch the light her insides clench in response and she can't suppress, no matter how she tries, the aching hungry groan that escapes her throat. He wants to, she can tell. The animal part of him calls to something unnamed in her, something raw and ravenous and crouching that recognizes a mirror, a likeness. She feels exposed and yet strangely safe. _Understood_ , somehow. She wants to reach out and run her fingers along the black veins around his eyes, to pull those deadly fangs close to her mouth and urge them to have their fill.

The thought itself is enough to push her over the edge. She tilts her head with a cry as the climax slams into her. Magic floods her veins, brilliant and exhilarating, and she's never known it could feel so good. It's not _supposed_ to feel this good. Lost in the throes, Bonnie finds herself clutching at his back like a lover, her legs tangled and shaking around him as she comes.

* * *

Bonnie Bennett caught in the inexorable grip of ecstasy is a sight that sears itself into his mind. She's uninhibited, _radiant_. Beautiful as a flash of lightning, and he's always wanted to close his hand around something that scintillating. Something that ethereal.

She exposes the delectable curve of her neck, making his fangs itch to sink there. But he stops himself mere inches from her skin. The wolf and vampire in him are both ravening, and he trusts neither to taste her and come away unscathed.

With a herculean effort Klaus kisses her runaway pulse, sampling the salt-damp of her skin, and wills the animal away. The hunger finds refuge in lust, and his hips move ravenously until he spills himself inside her, swearing against the curve of her shoulder.

They lie there for a few moments, their bodies still joined, still shuddering, until finally she pushes at his chest and squirms beneath him. Her touch is electric, crackling with renewed power as he slides out of her and they both re-adjust their clothing. There's a small fleck of blood on her thigh that tantalizes him briefly before her dress sweeps down over her legs and she lowers herself off the table.

"I...thought you were going to bite me," she says, smoothing a hand across her unblemished neck.

"Wouldn't want to get our 'wires crossed' now, would we?" he replies. Despite the physical satisfaction registered in his body, as he watches her smooth her attire and her hair back into place his mood fast descends into a listless irritation. He tries to focus on the precious blood locked away inside his closet, the key to a new family that would be eternally loyal, and unquestionably his.

"Well...thanks," Bonnie mumbles, and he half believes she said nothing at all. She's aglow with magic, her face open and soft for the briefest moment before she hurries out of his room like a small moon, and he knows she did say it, and moreover that she meant it. She's _thankful_ that he kept his word. And he wishes with a sudden blinding rage that he'd broken her rule and marked her somewhere - anywhere - on her virgin skin. The vulnerability on her face makes his hands curl with the urge to seize and drag her to his bed, to have her until dawn light, Silas and the rest be damned, until that softness belongs entirely to him, without concession, without reservation. _This_ is the side of Bonnie Bennett that truly defies his understanding, the side of her she reserves for _them_ , the side of her that won't - that can't - ever be his.

* * *

They gather for the ritual the next night. Bonnie arranges the necessary candles at the basement of the Gilbert house while her magic coils inside her, impatient to spring forth and serve its purpose, her movements faintly tremulous as her body fights to contain more power than it's accustomed to.

Elena watches her in silence while Shane, evidently overcome by the solemnity of the occasion, stares out the small window.

Bonnie turns as Stefan and Damon join them, only to note with dismay that Klaus has also decided to make an appearance. Startled, she drops a few of the candles and begins hastily retrieving them. She talks as casually as she can, telling the Salvatore brothers what she'd been able to glean from her Grimoire: namely, that as the spell extinguishes the doppelgänger line all of the vampires should feel momentarily weakened as the magic in their blood recalibrates itself.

"It's nothing that won't go away in a few minutes," she adds, rising to her feet.

"That's why we brought him," Stefan says, nodding at Klaus. "In case something goes wrong, he might not feel the effects as badly as we do."

"Nothing's going to go wrong," Bonnie assures them with a touch of impatience. "I have the spell, and I have enough magic."

Damon is the one who raises an eyebrow, "Yeah about that. How exactly did you get all juiced up again?,"

"I figured it out," Bonnie rushes to say, ignoring the hot blush that spreads through her body. "I used some of Elena's blood to do an Expression spell. It magnifies the existing magic in a body and-,"

Damon rolls his eyes. "Would've been useful information back when we were trying to kill this fucker," he says, pointing at Klaus. Stefan puts a hand on his shoulder in a conciliatory gesture.

She finally turns to the hybrid who's remained uncharacteristically silent. She waits for some snide remark or embarrassing comment, but he only inclines his head before handing her a candle that had rolled by his feet. Bonnie takes it silently, avoiding his eyes.

Elena, to all their surprise, asks the lot of them to leave the room so she might have a moment alone with Bonnie. "You too, Stefan," she says softly.

Bonnie looks at her in confusion and concern once they vampires and Shane have filed out.

"You didn't use my blood for a spell, did you?" Elena asks, bluntly. "You gave it to Klaus, in exchange for channelling him."

The expression on the doppelgänger's face brooks no argument. Bonnie hangs her head a little. "I'm sorry I lied, 'Lena, but it was the only way-,"

Elena cuts her off by pulling her into a fierce hug. "Will you stop apologizing for trying to save my life? I should be apologizing to _you_!"

Bonnie stares at her best friend, her sister, lost for words.

"It's why you told me not to tell Jeremy about tonight isn't it?" Elena says, squeezing her hands. "You didn't want him to know."

The Hunter was currently at the Salvatore house with Caroline (the latter having been instructed to keep him there under false pretenses) with no knowledge of what was about to happen. Bonnie feels guilt pricking behind her eyelids. "I understand if you feel like you have to tell him-,"

"All I understand, is that this is the last time you're going to sacrifice anything for me, Bonnie Bennett," Elena says, her brown eyes glistening with sincerity. "After this is over I'm gonna be the best friend you've ever had, a _real_ friend."

And Bonnie wants to believe it. She _makes_ herself believe in it: a clean slate for all of them, a chance to recover something they'd all lost before they even knew they had it.

"Ready?"

Elena nods with a smile and they summon the others back to the room.

With eyes on the future, Bonnie picks up her Grimoire and begins the spell.

* * *

Her small figure is unshaken in the midst of torrential magic as the spell rattles the foundations of the house like a summer storm.

Klaus feels it, the moment when the doppelgänger line is cut free, like a blow to the chest. His legs buckle and he finds himself kneeling, limbs frozen and veins glowing dark beneath his skin. Beside him, Stefan and Damon lie unconscious on the floor.

Fighting dizziness, he looks to Bonnie and finds her lying on her side, her body evidently reeling from the discharge of an intense amount of magic. At the center of the circle of candles, Elena Gilbert rises shakily to her feet, a smile of joyous disbelief breaking across her face.

He watches her take a deep breath, savoring her new state, before Shane crosses the room and cuts her throat open with a knife.

* * *

"You did well, Bennett-witch," he says above her.

Bonnie tries to scream. She wants to scream. But her lips won't move, her hands won't rise, her magic won't leap to her aid.

 _Silas._ She blinks in disbelief through her tears, "No- NO...I pulled you out-,"

"You pulled _a_ soul out of Shane, my dear. A tenacious one too," he says, his voice soft with wonder. "He fought me long and hard to remain in his body. But as I suspected, you were stronger. You _are_ Qetsiyah's blood, after all."

She manages to scream at last, a twisted howl like something battering the walls of a cage.

"Thank you," Silas says like a prayer, before raising the knife to his own throat. A single cut and blood sprays in the moonlight.

His body lands beside Elena, who's bled out onto the basement floor, and Bonnie can only watch, helpless, soundless, as the light leaves their eyes.

* * *

 _ **A/N:**_ _When I first started writing this fic **thefudge** threw down the gauntlet by pointing out that I've never written an extended smut scene, sooo if you hated this issue your complaints to her! For those of you that cussed me out for the way I ended the last chapter: hope this was somewhat worth the wait despite the grim ending lol. Thank you again for all your reviews and faves and follows! And do let me know your thoughts in the reviews!_

 _For those of you on Tumblr, go check out **tehzo** and her amazing Klonnie gif series titled "Reluctant Alliance AU" which was one of the sources of inspiration for this fic. Also, do check out "Altered Carbon" by **thefudge is grumpy** , "Gigolo" by **elsac2** and "Kissed by Fire" by **TheHedgeRider** for some delicious new Klonnie goodness. Until next week! xoxox_


	4. Chapter 4

**part 4/7: ritual**

* * *

 _six months later_

The local cemetery is bereft of visitors at this hour, the city being under an unofficial curfew for weeks now. Bonnie walks between the graves undeterred. She can find her way through this place with her eyes closed if she wants to. She supposes there's something tragic in that, but nothing she wants to dissect.

The moon shines on Elena's headstone: spotless marble mounted by an angel with wings spread wide and one hand reaching for heaven. The imposing piece had been paid for by the Founder's Council.

Bonnie walks past it hurriedly.

She can't bear to look at her friend's smooth face preserved in stone. She thinks she might drown in her shadow if she does.

It's graduation day at Mystic Falls High. She and Elena and Caroline should be celebrating with their friends and boyfriends, toasting to their new, happier lives.

* * *

 _ **Two months ago**_

 _The guidance counselor is polite but firm. Bonnie sits beside her father while Ms Gordon's words skim over her without leaving a mark. She's missed too many classes, Mrs Gordon says, glancing furtively between father and daughter, and her grades have plummeted beyond a semester's reprieve. She understands that Bonnie was very close to Elena Gilbert - such a tragedy, and sure to cause a traumatic change in any young person's stability - but there's really nothing she can do at this late stage._

" _I'm afraid Bonnie won't be able to graduate next month, Mr Bennett," Mrs Gordon says with a pinched look on her face. "But she can enroll in the summer and-,"_

" _Thank you," Rudy says curtly, shaking her hand. "We'll be in touch. Bonnie?"_

 _Bonnie mumbles her own thanks and follows him out to the car. Like Mrs Gordon's words, the strange, skittering looks directed at her by other students no longer make any impression. Inside her is a deep core of numbness that holds her in place, that keeps her walking, while the rest of her floats, suspended, like a balloon._

 _They drive home in strained silence, and Bonnie hurries up to her room before Rudy can initiate any conversation. Although the warmth of a Virginia summer is already encroaching, there's a chill in her bones she can't shake. It takes three cigarettes for her nerves to settle and the throbbing headache to recede. She'd never really wanted to smoke, and Grams cautioning her about the effect of narcotics on a witch's magic had stifled any flicker of curiosity she may have had. But two weeks after Elena's funeral she'd lain in bed unable to sleep, unable to cry, unable to do anything but lie trapped and helpless within a prison of her own thoughts, before stealing down to the study and removing two cigarettes for herself from Rudy's secret stash. The nicotine soothed her nerves like cool water, but it also made the magic spark and flare in her veins. It made her feel alive, like living could be good and sweet instead of bitter and empty._

 _Turning the smoke detector back on and spritzing the air with Febreze, Bonnie washes her hands and opens the bathroom door, only to find Rudy leaning against her desk with a deep frown on his face. She's never seen her father look at her this way, like he's wary of her. But no, that's not quite right. Like he recognizes something, or someone else._

" _We need to talk, Bonnie."_

* * *

Her path takes her to the very end of the cemetery, where the weeds are overgrown and only a single, withered willow tree keeps vigil.

Shane had been buried here, without a marker, without candles, without grace. And Bonnie feels keenly that it's her fault. If she had paid attention, if she hadn't let herself get swept up in the fantasy of a whole new life, if she'd been a better more capable witch and sensed the difference between Silas' soul and the soul of an innocent man - all of this might have been prevented.

But even these thoughts no longer crush her underfoot like they once did. Instead they drift over her like clouds while she's untouched and turning to stone. She kneels, her hand hovering over the unmarked earth until, one by one, a small crop of daisies rise to adorn it.

She should cry, she should apologize, she should do something to accompany this little offering. But there's only the hum of magic and the gleam of white petals under the moon. She's not even sure why she's doing this, except that it feels wrong not to. It feels like _someone_ has to.

A voice clicks softly behind her. "Out after curfew again?"

* * *

 _Rudy lays out the summer plans, watching her hesitantly as he does so. She can't understand why everyone stares at her like a cornered animal. She's already done the worst. Torn an innocent soul from a man's body. Let her best friend bleed to death a few feet from her. She's rudderless, there's nothing left. Nothing to give, nothing to fear._

 _She is to stay with her Uncle Ralph and his wife Leona indefinitely, attend summer school during the day and help them out with church activities on the evenings and weekends. It'll be good for her, Rudy says. Routine, discipline, distance from Mystic Falls, getting away from all this occult stuff._

 _She almost laughs at her father's innocent but shallow perspective. He thinks what the police think, what the newspapers and all other official outlets had been told: that Shane was a murderous creep who'd fixated on Elena and killed her in some satanic ritual in her own house before committing suicide, leaving their bodies to be discovered by Bonnie. Rudy has no idea of her own part in that tragedy or how she got there, how some nights she still hears Silas commending her strength while he stands over Elena's corpse._

" _Bonnie? Are you listening?" Rudy asks, peering at her in concern._

" _Yup, yup...," she says, clasping her twitchy hands and wishing she were holding a cigarette._

 _Rudy pauses, his brow furrowed a little. "I know your Uncle Ralph can be...stern. But he just wants what's best for you, honey. We all do."_

 _Memory makes her knees itch a little and she has to stem a flood of childish panic that wants to scream at her father._ If you send me there I'll die. I'll lie down in the grass next to Uncle Ralph's hydrangeas and he'll find my corpse in the morning.

 _But she swallows down the turmoil, smiles when Rudy kisses her forehead before leaving for work. She calls Jeremy that night and tells him her plan. They can pool their meagre savings from part time jobs and head out of Mystic Falls together. She's turning eighteen in a few weeks, so Rudy wouldn't be able to tell the police she'd been kidnapped. Bonnie grasps eagerly at the thought of speeding down a highway, Jeremy's hand in hers, into a kind of oblivion where they could remake themselves. And once she'd built another life, become someone else, once she knew what it was to feel alive again, she told herself she'd come back, visit her father, apologize for running away, make him understand._

 _But even this small hope flickers and dies with the reality of how little money they have between them. For nearly a week she languishes as though stricken with an illness, until Rudy's concern grows and he makes mention of visiting the psychiatrist. So when, out of the blue, one of Sheila's former colleagues at the local college, John Wilkes, an occult enthusiast as he calls himself, approaches her and asks to purchase her Grimoire for a small but vital sum, she leaps at the opportunity._

 _Afterwards, she tucks the money in an envelope that she bids Jeremy hide in his room until they're ready to leave. She tells herself the small empty ache inside her is just the residue of her old life falling away._

* * *

It's him of course. The hybrid is wearing his trademark Henley beneath a leather jacket, and holding a bottle of whiskey. He doesn't stagger like a drunkard should, but his edge, that customary alert grace feels chipped. In the months after Elena's death they'd fallen into an unspoken custom of meeting at the cemetery. His presence steals over her like nicotine, but warmer, ineffable.

"Is a graveyard not an odd choice to celebrate graduation?" he asks, coming to sit beside her. "Unless of course there's nothing to celebrate."

Her silence is all the answer he needs.

"I would say I'm sorry, but I've never been much of a liar."

She snorts.

"In any case, your gifts were wasted on that sad excuse for a school."

It's not the remark that catches her off guard - she knows by now that he regards most things in Mystic Falls with contempt - but his tone. He's watching her with raised eyebrows, as though challenging her to disagree. Like he wants her to hear it.

Bonnie shifts a little. "Thanks...? My dad doesn't think so but-,"

"He's human, and what he knows inconsequential."

"If you want an education that matches your talent as a witch," Klaus continues, "there are entire cities, entire worlds you might explore. New Orleans, for example."

She frowns. Her Grams had mentioned the Crescent City to her in passing, but Bonnie had always felt too intimidated by her inexperience to venture into those seasoned crowds. And, when she wasn't intimidated, she was busy putting last minute spells together to help her friends. She quickly squashes a faint spark of curiosity that threatens to resurface.

"I think I've seen enough of the supernatural world already," she says, quietly.

"Ghosts and werewolves, doppelgängers and their lap dogs," he sneers.

"Originals, murderous hybrids" she adds, arching her brow at him.

"And in New Orleans are Shapeshifters, and Seers, and covens of witches who trace their lineage to the dawn of humanity."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Wouldn't you _like_ to be somewhere else? Somewhere no one knows, or cares, about your part in ending the doppelgängers?" he asks, blithely. "You can tell the truth, love. One pariah to another."

His eyes are coals in the dark, they seem to burn in the pit of her stomach with that same naked feeling of recognition in which she'd lost herself for a moment the night they -

"Jeremy and I are leaving." she adds, not sure why she feels flustered. "We have enough money saved, and I turn eighteen soon-,"

"When?"

"We're thinking about leaving a week from now. My dad's out of town that day and-"

Klaus makes an impatient sound. "I was referring to your birthday."

"Oh- that's on Friday," she says, taken aback again. "Why, are you getting me a card?"

"Come with me," Klaus says, without breaking his stare. "Come with me to New Orleans."

Her head spins a little, his request prying open a part of her she's determined to lock away. A part of her she knows has to die.

Bonnie tries to keep her voice light, "What am I going to do in New Orleans?"

"You would want for nothing." His voice is a soft challenge, daring her to test the limits of what he could give her. His proximity makes her fingertips tingle with the knowledge that like cigarettes, he's become a secret craving. She could touch his lips and inhale more magic than she has in months.

"I can't," she says, looking down at her hands. "I'm done being a witch. It's too much to figure out...and when I try to help them people just get hurt."

"Magic is who you are, not a tool you can put away when you choose," he argues, his voice clipped.

"Well being me hurts, okay?" she blurts. Her face burns and there's a thickness in her throat.

His hand seizes her wrist, preventing her from rising. Before she can stop him, his mouth is ghosting over her palm, brushing her fingers, trailing down her wrist bone. He presses none too gently on her pulse, and magic wells up inside her. "You will miss it," he says, his voice gone dark. "And on long nights you will yearn until you bleed, for the rush, the joy. Even the pain."

His words fall on her like pin-pricks, magnifying the swirl of voices in her own head that she'd thought well-smothered into a core of numbness. Being around him has never stopped being dangerous. In his presence she feels the comfort of shared blame. She can breathe freer, want things she has no right to want.

But magic had proven a treacherous, addictive force. And wasn't it her wanting that had got Shane and Elena killed?

"I would," he adds.

She bites the inside of her cheek. "I'm not like you."

Her words freeze the air between them. They're a lie. She fears she might be too much like him. That the common ground they share might swallow her whole.

Klaus releases her hand, remaining seated while she stands and brushes dirt off her jeans. It's strange to look down at him, at the outline of his head and profile and shoulders, and think this might be the last time she sees him.

"Goodbye, Klaus," she says, almost to herself, before hurrying away without looking back. She tamps down the ball of strange, fluttery disquiet inside her, willing it to choke.

Klaus remains where she left him, beside the flowers on an unmarked grave.

* * *

 _ **Four months ago**_

 _He listens with something between boredom and despair as Elijah very carefully explains why he'd asked to meet here, at the foot of the doppelganger's grave._

 _His older brother folds a handwritten note about the importance of compassion and tucks it between the fresh flowers always plentiful at her headstone, and informs him that he's leaving for good this time. He isn't sure where to, but he intends to disappear into a quiet crowd somewhere and watch the years go by. There's nothing left to hold him there, Elijah says, now that Rebekah has already made off to parts unknown with Kol in tow._

" _It's strange," Elijah muses, gazing up at the stone angel's face. "But sometimes I wonder...was it our blood that held us together all these years, or hers?"_

 _This statement makes Klaus long to pull the statue down with his bare hands and crush it to dust, but instead he settles for smashing his bottle of whiskey against the marble._

 _Elijah only smiles, watching the dark libation pour down into the earth._

" _Goodbye, Niklaus."_

* * *

There's something to be said for history's definitive power. A thousand years he's hunted and hated the doppelgängers, scorning and manipulating those who loved them, and now, suddenly, it's no more. Nothing to hunt, nothing to hate, no repeating pattern against which to define himself in the rupturing. It's a bit like a blow to the head, a perpetual sense of dull disorientation that's had him lingering aimlessly in Mystic Falls for the past few months, that now finds him staggering into his own house after getting himself properly drunk.

He's mildly surprised to find Stefan there, cognac in hand, feet propped on a stool, waiting for him. He hasn't seen the younger vampire in weeks.

"Damon left town yesterday," Stefan says, holding his glass up to the light. "I don't think he's coming back."

"I'll fetch the champagne," Klaus says, shuffling to the minibar.

"You smell like dirt," Stefan observes, sniffing the air before rising lithely to his feet. Klaus hears the Ripper in his voice. Not the blood-crazed monster that left a trail of dead in Monterrey, but the other side of him, when the savagery is steady and precise as blade. The side more true to Stefan's everyday nature. The side Klaus had once longed to draw forth in spite of Elena Gilbert.

"I was at the cemetery," Klaus informs him. "It's a popular haunt these days." Briefly, he thinks of the little witch with her scarred knees, her jagged edges of magic ready to cut him open. _I'm not like you._ Somehow, maddeningly, she remained inviolate in her convictions while he himself...he himself is suddenly a relic without a past, a creature out of place and time.

"I haven't gone in months." Stefan sets his glass down and draws closer. "It doesn't feel right. That statue isn't Elena, could never be Elena _._ "

"But it is," Klaus snaps. "She's dead, and her likeness will never appear again. Now, if you came here to wax poetic about your grief for the doppelgänger-,"

"I didn't," Stefan says, and his eyes turn the color of licorice.

Klaus watches the younger vampire close the distance between them, his hands sweeping down his chest and beneath his shirt. Stefan moves with a quiet fury that burns where skin touches skin. They've been playing this game on and off since the doppelgänger's death. It should be beneath him, for Stefan is one of those who blames him for Elena's demise.

But the blame is comforting. Familiar even. It grounds him in...something. Stefan's fangs bury in his' neck while his hand slips past Klaus' belt to take hold of his cock. Klaus laughs without sound, half contemplates shoving the other vampire off him and telling him to go embrace the dirt that covers his precious Elena.

He doesn't.

He lets his body go languid and supple. He lets himself be molded and seized in the moment. There's no tenderness in Stefan's touch, there's not even hunger - he's running from ghosts, falling through the void of loss into the first thing his hands can hold.

And in that dead gesture there's history,- _God_ , just enough history to ache.

* * *

It's almost two am when Jeremy responds to her text.

He's at Mystic Grille with some friends, he says, and she should come by. He's missed her, he says. It feels like he hasn't seen her in forever. It's eight days in fact, Bonnie's counted them. Ever since Elena died, Jeremy's taken to spending a lot of time with his old crowd, most of whom were now art majors at Whitmore. Bonnie had met one or two of them briefly and...it hadn't gone well. They were older, with cutting eyes and tongues and a disdain for anything they termed "provincial". They adored Jeremy because of his drawing skills and sensitive nature, but they had no frame of reference for her. Really she suspected it was because they'd all been friends with Anna, who had apparently been quite the artist herself. But when she, Bonnie, was around, they grew quiet and bored. The only difference after Elena's death is that their stiffness is now occasionally interspersed with a kind of morbid gawking that makes her restless. Like she's a curiosity, or something in a zoo. Truthfully, she hates them, and finds herself longing for the days when their social circle consisted of stolen interludes with Caroline and Tyler and Elena, along with the Salvatores, in between dances and classes as they strategized on how to escape the newest threat to their safety.

It was as though Elena was a magnetic core that held them together and, when that core was extinguished, they'd all scattered to the winds. Sheriff Forbes had moved herself and her daughter out to El Paso months ago, and Tyler followed soon after. The family Bonnie had thrown herself against the world for had vanished like a mirage.

While she hesitates to respond, Jeremy sends back a selfie. He's flanked by a group of friends, one of whom is a girl Bonnie recognizes as Anna's close friend, Lea. Her blue-streaked hair spills down Jeremy's shoulder as she tilts her face up for the photo. In the dim light, Bonnie can see their eyes gone soft and glowing, their smiles lopsided. Empty glasses gleam in both their hands.

Bonnie feels her stomach drop a little. She tells herself it's nothing. Jeremy's just having fun with his friends, as he's entitled to. And besides, she never told him what happened between her and Klaus all those months ago. Nor about their graveyard conversations. Nor how she'd shivered when he kissed magic into her fingers, how she'd let herself feel a pang of curiosity about the world he spoke of.

Since Elena's death their relationship has lingered in a strange limbo, neither moving forward nor dissipating. Leaving together, Bonnie feels certain, would propel them into motion. But they needed something to set them on their course. Something to seal the deal, as it were.

She types back, her mind made up.

 **B:** _I'll see you on Friday, and we can celebrate my birthday. Just the two of us xoxo_

There's power in two bodies joining, she knows that all too well now. And it's what she and Jeremy need, what would bind them together so they can stand firm in their commitment, so they can face the future undaunted, hand in hand.

Bonnie huddles into her covers and slides her phone under the pillow so she can listen for his reply.

Her hand still burns where it touched Klaus' mouth.

* * *

 _ **A/N:** This fic is gonna skip an update next week because I have some family coming to town, but I'll be back on schedule after that. I know this chapter was more contemplative and bridge-like compared to the action-oriented previous one, and I also didn't have time to edit it as much as I would have liked, but I hope it was still enjoyable! Thank you everyone for your amazing reviews and support for this fic, and I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts xoxox_


	5. Chapter 5

**part 5/7: possession**

* * *

The money's gone.

She's searched every corner of Jeremy's room, opened every drawer, rifled through backpacks and even hefted the mattress, panting, to look underneath. On her eighteenth birthday, Bonnie stands amid the shambles of her boyfriend's room and tries not to scream in despair.

She questions Jeremy with a shaking voice, praying for some reassurance, some magical answer. But the only miracles she's ever known are the ones she wrought herself, with her own hands and body, for a cause that loomed greater than her and filled the sky. She doesn't speak, biting her trembling lip hard enough to taste blood. When Jeremy inquires again if everything's okay her voice breaks, and she blurts out, "Jer, it's gone. The money - our money. I looked everywhere and-,"

"Oh that," his voice is slow and relaxed. Too relaxed, she thinks. "I invested it. I was gonna tell you at the party."

Her legs turn to stone as she nearly collapses onto his bed. "You...what?"

"I know you said we should celebrate just the two of us, but you only turn eighteen once. So I invited some people over, it's gonna be fun," he promises, coming to sit beside her. "You deserve some fun-,"

"I meant the money," she says, flatly, shrinking from his touch.

"Oh," Jeremy draws back with a wounded look. "I invested it. Lea knows this guy who's doing a start-up, and he's promised all the investors triple our money back in a year or so-,"

"I don't have a year, Jeremy! My dad wants to ship me off to South Carolina in a few weeks."

"Babe, we'll figure something out-,"

Burning words crowd her throat. _We had something figured out. We had a pact. My birthday present was going to be leaving, together. A new life._ Somehow, all that surfaces is a strangled whisper, "I sold my Grimoire..."

"Babe, it's gonna be okay," Jeremy says, trying to reach for her again. "Let's go downstairs and get shitfaced. It's your _birthday._ "

Bonnie surveys the mess of his room. The unlit candles she'd placed everywhere are now simply part of the debris. She had planned to be up here when Jeremy arrived, surrounded by soft light, wearing the nightie she had bought almost a year ago when they first started dating, to initiate the next level of their physical relationship before they left Mystic Falls behind.

Her temples throb, her fists opening and closing as she fights off a wave of helpless anger. In a moment of blind impulse she wants to call Klaus, but she quickly squashes that thought.

 _What would she even say?_

There's a hungry, desperate place inside her, its jaws widening, beckoning her to fall.

"Leave me alone," she whispers.

Jeremy's face is a picture of hurt, but she remains frozen, distant, until finally he walks slowly out of the room. She goes to the window, still wearing the silk nightie under her jacket, and lights up a cigarette. The soothing rush only lasts for a seconds before dissipating. She's restless, empty with longing, and her magic thrums in concert with her mood. She wants her Grimoire back, if only to feel those heavy pages between her fingertips, that tingle along her scalp when she perused a new spell. With magic, she realizes, she's never quite alone. There's always a way out, always some tiny flicker of hope. And right now, staring down the barrel of a dark future, she wants more than anything to stoke that flicker into a flame, into something that can keep her warm.

She marches downstairs, ignoring the startled looks and whispers, straight to the table piled with booze. She's midway through her second glass of bourbon when someone dims the lights and music floods the room. Bodies sway and bump each other, their movements erratic, their eyes glowing. Whatever they're high on makes them hail her with enthusiasm. Her nightie, a silky tea colored thing with a hint of lace and small embroidered flowers, looks like an especially daring dress, which seems to be a point in her favor. Jeremy scoops her up and showers her with birthday platitudes. She's still shaking, but the alcohol helps. Magic is racing through her veins at the speed of light. Jeremy's kissing her, pulling her close by the fireplace. There's a strange, sweet taste on his tongue that makes her head feel fuzzy and he's asking her if she wants some. She licks her lips and whispers yes. He puts something small and blue in her mouth and Bonnie welcomes the cotton-candy softness that spreads from head to toe, wants to sink inside it and forget everything. Her fingertips tingle and she feels like dancing. She's ballooned with magic. It's an easy, empty bliss. It's something like death. She pushes Jeremy away and lets herself get pulled into the crowd

She's almost the center of a ritual again, incandescent and arresting, the only time she's ever the center of attention. _Happy birthday happy birthday happy birthday._

The soft chanting carries her higher.

* * *

The doppelgänger blood is gone.

He hadn't seen Stefan in days, and after his own interlude with the witch in the cemetery Klaus had felt a fury of determination descend, and decided to make his own exodus, Elena's blood in hand, to a place where he could build a new, unfailing family. An army of hybrids, unwavering in their purpose, unshakeable in their loyalty, that would surround him and accompany him wherever he went. Let these pitiable others scatter in the wind, mourning the end of their precious doppelgängers. He would wear the fruit of their blood with aplomb.

But the safe is empty.

Someone had slipped in and taken the cask of blood without even so much as denting the metal, leaving only the reek of magic behind. For a moment he stands frozen, the safe door crumpling with the force of his grip, before he catches a trace of Stefan's scent lingering beneath the acrid notes of magic. So the Ripper is behind the theft, but aided by a witch. An image pierces his mind of Bonnie conspiring with Stefan to steal the blood. He thinks about her scattering flowers on a barren grave, and how he'd all but begged her to accompany him to New Orleans. He thinks about the taste of her on his tongue, the soft sincerity of her face, the innocence that had nearly beguiled him, and grows furious. In the end, she's no different from the vestiges of an all too familiar history, one where he's always the monster, always the bastard, never quite part of the family. Impotent rage scalds him, such that he barely thinks, barely registers his actions before he clears the miles between his dwelling and the Gilbert residence and charges in the door.

For it's not it's not the Ripper his rage truly seeks. Klaus sees her immediately, holding court atop a counter, surrounded by a group of young men in varying states of inebriation who seem to hang on her every word. Her head is tilted, her pupils so dark they almost eclipse the green in her eyes. She laughs softly, like light on clear glass, and lets a spark of magic dance along her fingertips while her small audience watches enraptured.

Whatever narcotic she's imbibed is clearly having its way with her and her magic.

Klaus cuts a path through the drowsy, swaying crowd and takes rough hold of her wrist.

One second she's floating on a delicious high, perched on the kitchen counter letting her magic slip her control breath by breath. The next, Klaus is in front of her, grabbing her wrist and causing her drink glass to shatter at their feet. One of the boys - Josh? Damien? she can't quite remember - makes the mistake of trying to intervene and goes flying halfway across the room. Klaus hasn't moved his gaze from hers. Luckily, everyone else is too high to make a fuss about their friend on the floor.

The hybrid looms over her, face stony with anger and palms flattened on either side of her thighs. She can't fathom why he's so angry. She can't fathom why anyone would be angry, would feel anything but _light_. "I was about to have a drink-,"

"I'm feeling a tad parched myself," he growls, dragging her off the counter. She squirms and kicks in his grip as he carries her through the party, but to no avail. The lightness she'd been swimming in evaporates and she's suddenly exposed to a blinding heat.

"Put me down!"

Klaus simply adjusts his hold and begins mounting the stairs. Desperate, Bonnie bites down on his shoulder. It feels childish and silly and _utterly_ satisfying. Her magic, already overstimulated, reacts like a live wire. The shock propels both of them forward and they're stumbling into Jeremy's room. Her senses soar to a wild height. She hears candles crushed under his boots before she's pinned down on the bed to meet the full fury of his gaze.

His voice cuts through the dizzy throbbing in her head. "Where is the blood, witch?"

* * *

He means to drink her, drain every last drop of her searing brilliance and leave nothing for the world. But first, he wanted her confession that she had betrayed him, to look down at her face and cement for himself the truth that Esther and Mikael had burned into him the night he triggered his wolf. That to be the pariah, the less-loved, was to forever anticipate knives in the dark. To always know that, at another's whim, you would be culled from the herd like a branch hewn swiftly off.

And he wanted to confront her alone. The devout and the debased, inevitably.

Her slip of a body beneath him affects him more than it should as he straddles her and restrains her magic-buzzing hands on either side of her head. Not that he thinks she could really throw a spell that matters in her current state. He's seen it happen to hundreds of young witches who'd yet to master their full powers: the right combination of drugs and alcohol and their overstimulated magic could burn them from the inside out. Someone should have intervened. Klaus thinks of her precious Hunter with a stab of contempt, the same Hunter he'd glimpsed semi-unconscious on one of the settees with a pale young woman draped across him. But such things aren't his concern. She isn't his concern, and he tightens his grasp as a reminder to himself.

"What...what blood?" she asks, wincing a little at his grip.

"The blood you delivered to me yourself," he murmurs, inching close to her face. "The last ounce of Elena Gilbert."

She flinches at his choice of words. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"It was in my safe two nights ago, and now it's gone. I know Stefan is responsible," he bites out. "But he was aided by magic."

"Well it wasn't me," she retorts, and as though in response the veins at her throat and arms glow silver-bright, her magic itself rebuking him. The heady scent of her blood catches him like a blow to the head, reminding him that it's been days since he fed. "And anyway," she continues, "we had a deal. You kept your promise, so I kept mine."

The words, spoken so simply, are nearly enough to drive him mad. For he knows they're the truth, he feels it in his _marrow_. Bonnie Bennett has never reneged on a solemn pact, not even when it served her best interest, not even when it was pledged to one such as him. He almost shrinks from her then, like she's something he can't quite grasp, not with his hands, not ever.

A sharp, unnatural laugh bursts from her lips. "Besides, I don't even have a Grimoire anymore," she says, and her laughter escalates into a hysterical pitch, her pulse going at a frantic pace while the silver magic in her veins acquires a sharp, blade-like brilliance poised to cut her to ribbons.

He could let it happen, he's watched it happen before. Frenzied magic consuming the vessel that contains it in a wild bid for freedom. He could watch all that lustrous energy burst and escape and leave the shell of her body behind. Bonnie Bennett would become one with the air and the stars and the sky, like many, many witches before her. She would be boundless, and free, and eternal. It's what she _should_ be. It's where she belongs. With the life she's had, letting her die is the right thing to do.

But he's never done the right thing. He's existed this long outside the purview of natural and supernatural law, and he has no intention of turning back. Klaus sinks his fangs deep into the white-hot vein in her neck, channeling, anchoring the flow of her magic into himself.

She goes still. A violent shudder travels through him as her magic latches on with a hundred silvery hooks, and then her blood is spraying inside his mouth, rushing down his throat, electrifying every vein in his body sharp enough to hurt.

The sounds of the party fade into a hum as all his senses zero in on the witch beneath him. Every breath, ever drop only inflames his hunger. But before he can drink deeper he feels her hand, crackling with power, tug at his hair. He refuses to detach his teeth from the blissful wound, drinking her with animal relish. Then, in the next instant, her magic sinks like claws and he finds himself on his back with the little silken witch above him. The motion having dislodged his bite, he stares at her full in the face, his mouth riverine with her blood, his eyes black and yellow and inhuman.

* * *

Bonnie remembers this face. The twin beasts of his nature risen to the fore, rendering his humanity a mask, a shell. It's a sight that should inspire fear and loathing. No self-respecting witch would allow her magic to cling to such a channel.

Bonnie lowers her head and kisses his bloody mouth. Her tongue darts along his fangs, her hands come to rest on either side of his contorted face. She was about to die, she was certain of it. She'd felt that frozen core inside her melt into light, more light than her body could contain. She should've let herself go, joined her Grams on the Other Side, paid her penance.

But at the last moment, she couldn't. She didn't want to go just yet, and she'd felt his teeth pierce her neck, anchoring her. It's a foreign feeling, this desire to live, to simply feel her own existence. Bonnie clings to it hungry as a newborn as the kiss grows pungent with her own blood, and feels his hands descend on her silk-covered skin. Her magic, having quieted from its earlier, deadly frenzy, now throbs with an ache in the pit of her stomach, a need that slowly but steadily builds. She hears him growl into their muffled, bloody kiss and in the blink of an eye she's on her back, her legs latched around him. With a vicious tug he rips her free of the lace panties she wore. She's not quite ready when he thrusts inside her. It's brutal and fierce, and the pain feels, it feels it feels it feels-

She moans, dragging her nails down his back.

They fall easily into the savage rhythm she recalls from the first night, abandoning language for a cadence of animal sounds, a staccato litany of panting, beastly groans. Somewhere in that chorus she says his name, _Klaus_ , and the syllables jolt them both. All the fear, the rage, the sorrow she's marched with since those painful hours at her uncle's feet, all the fiery grief of Gram's death and Abby's turning she could never show her friends, she gives it all to him. Her nails tear at his shirt, seeking his skin, and he responds by cradling her hips tightly in place. He plunges inside her hard and deep. Her spine feels electric. The party is still in full swing down below, music and handheld strobe lights conjuring a dull glow of sound and color that dances blue and pink in the walls around them. They are two misshapen sea creatures, coupling hungrily in coral darkness.

And to think she had come so, so close to dying -

Klaus' hands glide firm and possessive over the planes of her body. They could crush her in a blink, but for now they only roam and hold and press. They seem to cradle her bones. Elena died in this house, down below in the basement. They're practically fucking on her grave. She's where she's always been: inches from death. Bonnie feels her back arch off the bed as the orgasm rushes over her.

* * *

This time, they've broken all her rules. Their mouths sting with kisses. Bites and bruises bloom along her neck and shoulder and travel like petals down her back. Long after she's fallen asleep, still wearing the scraps of her silk negligee, Klaus holds her with a quiet, immutable greed.

He hates the fragility of her body in his arms. The soft rise and fall of her breathing grates on his sanity. She's the one thing in Mystic Falls he could neither destroy nor corrupt, for either would diminish that which rendered her peerless. The truest of heroes, the purest of martyrs. She's almost inhuman, existing outside the petty confines of lives he took delight in plundering. His own existence had taught him no other ways to claim his due: not loyalty, not kindness, not love. If he applied his old methods she would be his, but she would no longer be Bonnie Bennett.

And for a moment, he wants to kill her again. To blot her from history into the stories and myths where she belongs, where she'll be safe, untarnished. And yet his arms don't move to crush her, his fingers drift along her pulse without smothering, while his temples throb with hopeless, yearning rage, with an inexorable knowledge. He can't bear a world where she's imprisoned, he can't bear a world where she isn't his.

But in the chasm between them their bodies curl warm and close together.

In paradox, find their own oasis.

* * *

The younger Salvatore enters the room while he's still got Bonnie entangled in his arms. Klaus feels himself yanked off the bed and Stefan's angry demeanor fills his vision.

The Ripper's voice is cold,"What did you _do_ to her?"

Klaus is a mere second from tearing Stefan's hand from its wrist when a second figure emerges from the shadows, arresting his movement. Elena Gilbert wears a cool smile.

The brunette extends her hand, and Klaus feels a pinprick behind his ear like an insect's sting before consciousness drains swiftly out of him. Bonnie's sleeping face is his last sight before the world grows black.

* * *

 **A/N:** _I wrote this chapter listening to "spanish sahara" by **foals** on repeat (go listen for maximum klonnie feels) so please excuse all the emotions. Just when I think I've embarrassed myself with overemotional indulgence in these two dorks I surprise myself yet again! Why must I be this way? In any case, if you enjoyed this vat of feels please leave me a review with your thoughts. And thanks again for all your support for this story! xoxo_


	6. Chapter 6

**part 6/7: flight**

* * *

"Bonnie...will you help me?"

She gazes at Elena half expecting her to transform into stone before her eyes. She'd startled awake an hour ago to see the doppelgänger looking down on her. The shock had caused Bonnie to briefly lose consciousness and, upon reviving, she'd found herself laid on the couch with a blanket covering her legs. As though she'd been the victim of some unfortunate trauma. Now she sat self-consciously aware of her less than pristine appearance: her tousled hair, her ripped nightie, the evidence of Klaus' teeth and hands all over her. She recalls reading _The Scarlet Letter_ in AP English the previous year, and how her classmates had laughed at what they felt were antiquarian notions of morality. But while they joked about dressing as Puritans for Halloween and took mock surveys to see who'd qualify for scarlet lettering, Bonnie could only sit quiet, tugging her hem obsessively over the bead-like scars on her knees, suffocated with memories of Uncle Ralph's kitchen floor. As the town witch, the threat of collective rule branding you as a wrongdoer seemed far more plausible than not.

Elena's face twitches feverishly. "Bonnie...we're running out of time. If you don't help me I'll die again, forever."

"She's in shock," Jeremy mumbles, sitting up and attempting to look brave. "Klaus attacked her. She needs to go to a hospital-,"

"I'm fine," Bonnie says, cutting him off. Jeremy's seen her push herself to extremes before in the name of protecting everyone, but this is a different extreme. By consorting with Klaus she'd crossed a different, more dangerous line. A line that Jeremy would rather not confront at all. She waits for the customary stab of guilt but it feels ghostly, distant, like she's looking at Jeremy through a thin sheet of glass.

"He's right," Stefan says, sitting down across from them. "Klaus drank from you, and we need to get you cleaned up. But first, we need to dessicate him."

Bonnie feels a chill sweep over her.

"It's the only way to bring Elena back," Stefan continues in the steady, cool tone of the Ripper. He gestures to the cask next to him."I stole her blood from Klaus. We can remake the doppelgänger line once you do the spell."

Bonnie has the sensation of groping in a mist, dangerously close to the truth. "Where's Klaus?"

"He's in the basement, restrained," Elena says, pacing back and forth. "But we can't hold him for long-

It's then Bonnie hears the faint sounds of chanting through the floorboards. Witches. A whole coven of them if she had to guess. She turns to Stefan and Elena with a face full of questions.

"They're friends of mine, from New Orleans" Stefan says, curtly. Bonnie notices the way he glances at Elena, like her image is a knife he cuts himself on and returns to again, and again.

Stefan continues, "They're restraining Klaus right now but they can't dessicate him-,"

"He's being protected by magic," Elena adds, in an accusatory tone. " _Your_ magic."

* * *

Chained to the earth and surrounded by chanting, Klaus finds himself returned to ritual.

After the poison they'd injected him with wore off, he awoke to a coven working furtively to desiccate him. They want to keep him alive, Klaus surmises, but helpless. It didn't take a prodigious imagination to guess that their intentions extended to captivity and torture. Predictably dull.

After the doppelgänger immobilized him, the coven members had dragged him down to the basement and chalked a circle around him to begin their desiccation spells. They had continued for an hour or so before she had returned upstairs, leaving them instructions to continue. They were an ancestral coven, he recognized the scent and feel of similar magic from New Orleans, and their work is diligent and devout. He ought to have been a brittle husk hours ago.

Except for _her_.

Bonnie's blood still swirls in his veins, pulsing with traces of magic, resisting the onslaught of the coven's spell. He only need wait a little longer for their power to weaken before he can paint the floor with their entrails. Then, he would find Bonnie and-

His thoughts don't go any further. He can't consider her refusal, the lengths to which he'd be compelled to go to have her. Like a straggler in the desert, he can only think as far as reaching the promised sanctuary.

* * *

Unease crawls up the back of her neck like a spider. "How did you come back?" she asks Elena, meeting her gaze.

"Bonnie, we don't have time-,"

"I watched you die," Bonnie continues, as the memory of that night washes over her. "Silas cut your throat, right in front of me."

Elena wraps her arms around herself. "I remember...," she says softly.

"Do you remember what you said to me? Before we started the ritual? Before we knew how it was all going to end?"

Bonnie feels tears dampen her cheeks. In that moment when she'd unknowingly hugged Elena for the last time she'd felt a kind of peace and understanding between them. A recognition of the choices fate had pushed them both to make. But this feels different, wrong even. This, feels like a lie.

"How did you come back, Elena?" Bonnie asks, stepping forward. "Who brought you?"

Elena's face flickers strangely. "Bonnie, you _have_ to help me."

Bonnie feels Stefan take hold of her arm, his fingers bruising tight as the Ripper's voice slides across her skin. "This isn't a request, Bonnie."

Bonnie doesn't register clenching her fists. In the next instant, Stefan goes flying across the room. All three turn to stare as the magic seems to crackle along her fingers.

* * *

His moment comes sooner than expected as a flash of silver magic travels through the house like lightning.

 _Bonnie_.

The coven scrambles, their linked chanting momentarily disrupted, to reassert their hold. It's much too late of course. Like the monster they feared, he's already broken their binds to leap at their open throats.

* * *

Elena wears a look of triumph. "Klaus didn't do anything to her she didn't want," she says in a flat, cold voice. "Look at her, she's a lightning rod of magic. She's channeled him."

Jeremy blinks at her as though he can't follow the words. Stefan's eyes narrow slightly as he gets to his feet.

"It's true," Bonnie hears herself say. It's like a weight leaving her shoulders and a band aid being ripped off, all at once. She's standing straighter and yet feels exposed. "I lied that night. I wasn't using Expression. I went to Klaus and we struck a bargain."

"...bargain?" Jeremy asks, looking so stricken that Bonnie almost wants to comfort him. The two of them had held on to each other so tightly and blindly since the day they met, like children with security blankets, each unwilling to relinquish their small shelter in a stormy world. But there's some things innocence can't weather, no matter how much you want it to.

"I slept with him, Jeremy," Bonnie says, quietly. "That's how I had enough power to do the spell."

Silence seems to pound against her ears as she watches the confused hurt on his face.

It's Stefan who speaks. "So...Klaus didn't _attack_ you a few hours ago?"

Bonnie feels a twinge of sadness for the friendship she once thought she had with the younger Salvatore. Whatever semblance of that she'd clung to is shattering before her eyes. She shakes her head.

Elena, or whoever is pretending to be Elena, scoffs behind him, and Bonnie addresses her again.

"Who are you?"

Stefan cuts in, a placating smile stretched across his face. "Bon, let's be reasonable."

"Who is she, Stefan?" Bonnie demands, hands outstretched in warning.

"I told you she wouldn't be any help," Elena sneers. Her face ripples and shifts, jaw and cheekbones widening, hair turning light. A witch with short blonde hair and glittering eyes stands in Elena's place, her voice dripping contempt. "Put on the right mask, and you can get people to do anything, betray anyone," she says, with a contemptuous jerk of her head at Stefan. "Tell me, Bonnie Bennett, what kind of witch protects a monster?"

They all take notice before Bonnie can respond: the house is silent, the chanting down below extinguished.

Several things happen at once. The shapeshifting witch tries to barricade the basement door. Bonnie feels a whoosh of air before she's pinned to the wall and Stefan's lacquered gaze bears down on her. Jeremy attempts to intervene but the vampire throws him clean across the room.

"Sofya is a coven leader from New Orleans," the Ripper says in a low, deadly voice. "She has a spell that can resurrect the doppelgänger line. All she wants in exchange is Klaus, unprotected, dessicated. If you do as she says-

"She won't want to come back, Stefan," Bonnie tells him evenly. "Not like this."

Speaking the truth, Bonnie finds, is much like breathing clean air after an eternity of suffocation. Your lungs are so hungry, their appetite becomes a thing of its own.

"What are you talking about?" he hisses.

"Elena told me she was tired of everything, being a doppelgänger, all the insanity that came with it. She just wanted a _normal_ life. More than anything."

"I won't bring her back into the middle of all this," Bonnie continues. "It's not what she would want. It's not what _I_ want."

"No," Stefan says, his gaze blackening. "Elena was happy with me, we were going to be happy together-,"

"She's gone, Stefan," Bonnie cries. "Let her go-,"

His hand is at her throat, cutting off her words, her air.

Bonnie feels her magic react, throwing Stefan off her in a surge of electric light. Before he can stand, Bonnie rushes to the cask of blood, Elena's blood, on the table and holds it high above her head.

It happens in a blink. She hears Stefan snarl, a desperate, animal sound, as he poises to leap at her again.

Maybe a few months ago she would have caved, lain down beneath the mountain of guilt and sorrow, beneath the shame of feeling responsible for the death of someone beloved.

But there's something about speaking your truth, standing in it bruised and blood spattered and wearing it as your own. Bonnie lets the magic flash out from her fingers, shattering the vessel that holds the last drop of Elena Gilbert. The blood explodes like a crimson firework in her hand, spattering the carpet and bathing her limbs.

The room glows briefly silver as Bonnie shudders from the aftershock. When the light fades she sees Stefan crawling on his hands and knees, keening like a wounded beast, trying to lift Elena's blood off the floor and into his mouth.

Klaus stands in front of the basement door, his shirt bloody and his hands dripping gore, holding the Sofya's heart in his hand. Their eyes meet across the bloody oasis.

"It's finished," Bonnie manages, her voice hoarse with tears.

The same silvery light momentarily clings to his frame. She feels it between her ribs, a scarlet thread that ties him to her, tethering them at their core, at the place where they aren't themselves. Where they are their truest selves.

* * *

They drive for hours, blood speckled and silent, until the treetops of Mystic Falls fade to a dark line at the bottom of a vanishing horizon. Bonnie falls asleep with her fingers clutching his.

When she awakes hours later, drowsy from exhaustion in a small motel room, it's night time once more. There's a covered tray of food on the nightstand. Under Klaus' coat she's still in the torn scraps of her nightie. Blood and grime and sweat-stained silk stick uncomfortably to her skin, reminding her of the time she watched a moth struggle out of its cocoon with the viscera of its old body still clinging to its limbs.

She shuffles to the tiny bathroom and finds the hybrid reclining in the tub, arms stretched along the edge and staring at the ceiling. For all that's passed between them she's not seen him naked before now. And yet it's not embarrassment she feels but an almost casual curiosity, like discovering a new birthmark on her own skin.

"I'd rather not be gawked at if you don't mind," he rasps, and she notices the half drunk bottle of vodka beside him on the floor. "Either join me or return to bed, witch."

Bonnie glances around the bathroom. "How long have you been in here?"

"Why does that matter?" he murmurs, reclining his head and allowing his eyes to drift closed. It's a side of Klaus Mikaelson she hasn't glimpsed before. The quiet and dark underbelly to his usual scintillating fury. She finds a comfort in that jaded indolence, as much as in the ravening monster. They index a shadowy place that feels something like shelter.

"Won't it be cold?" she asks, approaching the tub.

The hybrid's eyes drift lazily open, flickering down her legs before returning, slowly, to her face. "No."

"And you're not getting out any time soon I bet," she surmises, arms crossed.

"No."

There's a languid challenge in his voice that rings familiar. Bonnie feels half an inkling to heat the water to intolerable levels, see how quickly he vacates the tub then. Instead she shrugs off the bulky jacket and leaves it in a heap on the floor. Her nightdress follows, and she steps out of the tattered silken circle into the bath.

The bath is tepid but the heat of his body finds hers anyway.

Klaus absently strokes her foot as it rests against his chest. His other hand brushes her knee. She thinks one day she'll tell him how she came by those beaded scars.

Dried blood sloughs off her skin, reddening the water between them.


	7. Chapter 7

**part 7/7: epilogue**

* * *

She picks her way through broken glass and toppled furniture until she reaches the kitchen. Scorch marks adorn the walls of Dr Wilkes' restored Victorian house, marring the hardwood floors and making ghostly ruins of the curtains. Like someone took a flamethrower to the inside of the professor's home while a herd of animals trampled the floor. Her sense of foreboding deepens the further she walks into the ruined space. The kitchen is as cluttered and empty as the rest, the refrigerator door ajar, cat food scattered on the floor. There's no sign of life. And the longer she stands there, the more an oppressive feeling begins to clamp around her head. The aftermath of dark magic, thick enough to suffocate.

Feeling slightly faint, Bonnie braces herself against a counter for support when a warm softness nudges her hand, steadying her.

She looks down at the wolf that's followed her into the kitchen. Klaus presses his snout into her palm with a low growl.

"You were right," she says by way of reply. "Dr Wilkes definitely messed around with my Grimoire."

The question remains: what exactly had the professor unleashed?

They survey the kitchen together one last time, Bonnie absently stroking the wolf's ears as he stands beside her. The uneasy sense that something dark had taken place in the house increases steadily, until she feels Klaus nudge her leg in a gesture that mirrors her own restlessness. The wolf tended to be even more forthright than the man. He'd taken to shifting easier and more often, and while her magic draws on all aspects of his nature, it resonates most strongly with the animal.

She nods down at him. "Let's get out of here."

* * *

Dr Wilkes' trail takes them deep into Louisiana. Lying in the motel bed watching the sky purple and blacken like irises, Bonnie doesn't want to think about what they'll find, what the professor has used her Grimoire to conjure.

She tamps down the guilt and fear and reaches for determination instead. Some days are easier than others. Some days, the girl who wandered in the shadow of gravestones feels ever present, clinging to her ankles. But there's other days.

She hears Klaus step out of the bath. He liked to take those no matter where he was. A few moments later he's peeling back the covers and slipping into bed beside her.

"You will have it back," he murmurs along her nape, discerning her thoughts.

She huddles closer to him as his naked body curls around hers, sinking gratefully into the circle of the monster's safety.

There are other days.

* * *

 _ **A/N:** I can't ever seem to give these two an "ending" that isn't just a segue into another story. I guess I see Klaus and Bonnie as two characters who never run out of stories to tell. For this AU I sort of picture them in this quiet miscreant bond, hunting down her Grimoire, stealing nights at rundown motels, sharing baths. And channeling, naturally ;)_

 _I hope you enjoyed this weird little AU. I'm going to try my best to not start any new projects until I wrap up a few I still have going, so pray for me lol! And, as always, I look forward to hearing your thoughts in the reviews xoxoxo._


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